Many students at WashU report being uncomfortable expressing their political opinions in class and elsewhere on campus, out of fear of offending others or being stigmatized for being wrong.  At the same time, there is a familiar a model of political dialogue that seeks consensus and compromise, encouraging students to emphasize areas of common ground or undisputed fact.  These trends threaten to marginalize disagreement – especially political disagreement – and represent a lacuna in our pedagogy.  Our university should be a place where reasonable disagreement flourishes and where students learn to articulate their disagreements and critically engage with their disagreeing peers.

The Civil Society Initiative at WashU is seeking proposals from WashU faculty for curricular development projects that create new courses, course modules, and/or course materials that aim to cultivate disagreement in the classroom and beyond.  Specifically, we seek projects that aim to

• Create opportunities for students to disagree with their instructors and develop their ability to do this in other courses
• Introduce students to practical and theoretical questions about which there is reasonable disagreement about the correct answer
• Develop students’ abilities to articulate and share their beliefs and opinions about controversial questions
• Explore strategies for avoiding stigmatizing or marginalizing reasonable minority beliefs and opinions

Grantees will receive a $600 stipend and give a short presentation on their work at a symposium in Spring 2026.

Applicants should submit a PDF file to ahazlett@wustl.edu that includes:

1. A one page description of the proposed project
2. The applicant’s CV

Review of proposals will begin on August 1^st, 2025.

The Civil Society Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis was founded in 2023 on the premise that individual and collective reasoning about value questions and cultivating reasonable disagreement is an essential part of a flourishing democracy.  The Initiative is supported the Frick Initiative and the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy.